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In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

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Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the "self-made man," he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don't arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: "they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot." Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, "some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky."

Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. But there's more to it than that. Throughout all of these examples--and in more that delve into the social benefits of lighter skin color, and the reasons for school achievement gaps--Gladwell invites conversations about the complex ways privilege manifests in our culture. He leaves us pondering the gifts of our own history, and how the world could benefit if more of our kids were granted the opportunities to fulfill their remarkable potential. --Mari Malcolm

Quill & Quire

Outliers seems, initially, to be an inadvisable pairing of author and subject. Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for that august cultural magazine, The New Yorker, and author of two exemplary pop-science bestsellers, The Tipping Point and Blink, goes and writes a book on success – thus entering a subgenre whose foul-smelling precincts are overrun with charlatans, profiteers, and New Age fakirs. But, happily for him and us, he’s skirted ignominy by having written not some exhortative how-to guide, but a sober and far-ranging investigation of human achievement that rebuts some received wisdom on the subject. Gladwell begins by arguing that those “self-made” individuals we romanticize, who come from nothing and rise to the pinnacle of their chosen vocations on merit alone, simply don’t exist. Instead, he insists, high achievers “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies” that ultimately determine their status. Moreover, these same people who capitalize on their early good luck work much harder than their rivals; mastery in any calling, apparently, only arrives after 10,000 hours of training and study (a rather less appealing prospect than the wish-yourself-wealthy-and-fabulous strategy promulgated by The Secret). While it’s hardly a revelation that toil and connections and serendipity beget professional reward, Gladwell provides a surfeit of curious, even alarming, examples to prop up his thesis. In the course of his discussion, we learn that 40% of elite hockey players are born between January and March; that off-the-chart geniuses, collectively, accomplish no more in life than their randomly sampled peers; that contentious and irreverent flight crews are less likely to crash planes than deferential ones; that Asian students’ excellence in mathematics owes much to rice-based agriculture. Gladwell’s writing is clear and colloquial throughout, and his chapters are deftly structured, each one introducing new material while simultaneously reiterating and amplifying what came before. But after plowing through the dramatic anecdotes and gee-whiz factoids, adult readers are left to contend with the desolating assertion that the quality of their lives was determined decades ago by ancestral migration patterns or a summertime birthday or skipped piano lessons. In the end, I was yearning for some consoling piffle about, say, dream analysis or Mayan numerology, to convince me, however briefly, that the world could still be mine for the taking.

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Very good, although what lacks substantially here is how each outlier benefited more from luck than the "10 000" hour rule. By luck, I mean it more in the Japanese sense of the intersection of insight and opportunity. There are thousands of skilled athletes and programmers than can put in 20, 000 hours and will never become GOATs. So manage your expectations accordingly.

Excellent book. Had many principles I was able to look at in more depth after for graduate work. He makes some very interesting points about how outliers in data analysis and observation can actually be potentially new trends or tell the story for which the researcher is really looking. He talks about the 10K hour rule and how successes can be discovered. Classic Malcolm Gladwell. I've read it several times now.

Gladwell is an excellent writer who is able to combine facts and weave it into a story. I had read several of his books. However, this one was my personal favorite. The only real critical review of this book written by reviewers was that there are no women, I was not bothered by this as a female. It is not an overly intellectual read, more something to read quickly for fun.

One of those books that subtly changes you and your outlook on the world. Using anecdotes, riveting details, and data, Gladwell has planted the idea in my head that the world we have is not by coincidence or sheer dumb luck. We have the ability to change ourselves and our world, and become outliers too. There is no magic secret. It means looking at ourselves, at work habits, our cultural legacy and asking ourselves some hard questions. Gladwell's thesis is inescapable and puts the responsibility on each of us to create a better world and a better self.

Gladwell exposes something I've long held to be true myself: great success requires great luck. It also requires great talent and effort to capitalize on that luck, but luck is just as necessary. For example, if you're not born in the first few months of the year, your chances of being a pro-hockey player are dramatically reduced. Based on your astrological sign! That's not because of astrology, its because kids are ranked by year of birth, and those born earlier in the year are bigger, faster, and more coordinated on average because they're just older. And that means they're more likely to be chosen on special teams, where they get special coaching, further emphasizing their initial difference. That continues over the years until there's a tremendous gap between them and other, later-born children. Is that fair? No. It's just luck and the way the system is currently set up. Intriguingly, Gladwell suggests that these kinds of systems essentially miss 50% of a population's talent because they shunt out all those born in the later part of the year. That's a really interesting idea- a population could increase its pool of elite athletes (or students) by breaking them into 6-month groups, rather than 1-year groups.

For other kinds of success, especially financial, its often a matter of being at the right place, at the right time, with the right skills, to catch and ride an emerging trend in the financial world (e.g., railroads in 1850, clothing in 1930, software 1970, hostile take-overs 1980, etc.). Gladwell is clear that the leaders in these areas were all talented, driven people. But that doesn't change the fact that born five years earlier or later, they'd probably be nowhere near as successful as they are today. While he doesn't mention him, I like Darwin as an example. He was brilliant and hard working, but Alfred Wallace came up with (virtually) the same idea of evolution as he did. And Darwin was big enough at that time that Wallace sent him a draft copy to review. If Darwin had come along later, he would have been scooped. If he hadn't been as big as he was in biology then (thanks to non-evolutionary work), he would never have seen the manuscript. As it turned out, he gave Wallace co-credit, but that's another story. The point is that coincidental circumstance played as big a role in who published the theory of evolution by natural selection, and when it was published, as the characteristics of Darwin himself.

For me, the bottom line is that hard work and talent are very important, but so is looking out for those unique trends that might allow you to catch a wave and do something extraordinary with your life. Whether or not that will happen is a function of luck, but it's certainly important to be prepared should you ever get the chance. Overall, the book is very easy to read, and full of really good ideas. I found the last couple of chapters on math to be the weakest, but it's still a great book to read. Highly recommended.

A masterful analysis of the critical factors which determine individual success in almost any field or endeavor. Gladwell as usual poses the conventional wisdom and then proceeds to tear it to shreds in example after example of how famous people have obtained success. He boils the potential for success down to two temporal factors: when a person is born in relation to major social or technological changes and how much time it takes to become very proficient at something. While native intelligence is important, it is not the critical factor in determining the potential for success. Over and over, Gladwell provides examples which show that luck, being at the right place at the right time and spending an inordinate amount of time perfecting a task are the determinants of success.

I must admit I am slow the the Malcolm Gladwell party. This is the first of his books I have read. And I am so pleased that I did. Gladwell examines the path of personal success through the lens of our legacy. Brilliant and engaging writing. Highly Recommended.

I didn't exactly have any expectation, aside from the fact it's popular, when I picked it up and, probably, that allowed me to enjoy it so much. However, I have seen various arguments made in the book elsewhere before I read the book. Nonetheless, Malcolm did a far better job than the other sources through his qualified delivery and interesting real world examples.